How dare President Obama acknowledge the simple reality that there are untold numbers of gay couples raising healthy, happy children in this society? Especially in light of all the studies which show that children of gay couples do just as well as those raised by straight people, and in some cases do better? In the real world, it’s not controversial for President Obama to acknowledge this simple reality. In Wingnut Fantasy Land, though, Peter LaBarbera is having a conniption:

“If an adult man chooses to embrace homosexuality, that’ one thing. But two men imposing their homosexual lifestyle on an innocent, impressionable child ‚Äî thus intentionally denying that child a mother ‚Äî is something quite different. Shame on Obama for “gaying down’ the noble institution of fatherhood to appease his homosexual activist supporters.”

I know lots of gay parents, and their kids would probably look at you like “huh?” if you told them their parents were “imposing their homosexual lifestyle” on them. Because, here in the normal world, kids aren’t really privy to their parents’ sex lives, straight or gay. Only a highly disturbed individual would project his sexual insecurities onto other normal couples who are doing the hard work of raising children.

“Who can deny the notorious promiscuity that is rampant in the gay male subculture — and which often continues even after two homosexual men adopt a child,” LaBarbera said. “Witness gay parenting’ poster-boy, Dan Savage, a sex-advice columnist and author of The Kid: What Happened When My Boyfriend And I Decided to Go Get Pregnant. Savage promotes “non-monogamy’ as an alternative to marital fidelity ‚Äî and admits that he his “husband’ twice engaged in sexual “three-ways’ even after they adopted a baby boy. (One wonders who babysat “the kid’ during their homosexual sex romp.)”

Likewise, who can deny the notorious promiscuity that is rampant in the heterosexual culture? And who can deny that married straight couples often have affairs, leave their spouses, or have sexual lives that, though they don’t do it in front of the children, might be a bit unconventional, but work for them as couples? As far as who babysat Dan Savage’s son, my guess is that it was a babysitter.

Seriously, do Peter’s children know the details of his sex life with his wife? Moreover, does he give family slide shows every time he goes to Folsom? No?

Gay couples, regardless of whether they are monogamous or non-monogamous, likewise do not share their sex lives with their children. This should be common knowledge, and I suspect that it is to normal people.

As usual, though, Peter is not writing for a smart audience of savvy human beings who leave their suburban enclaves without locking the car doors, but rather is writing for the benefit of wingnuts, who have little contact with the outside world, and thus, are susceptible to his scaremongering.

But even if two homosexual men keep their disordered relationship “faithful,”

Scare quotes around “faithful” are a dogwhistle for his wingnuts meant to suggest “there is no such thing as a faithful homoseckshul relationship!” And even though committed gay relationships are often extremely healthy (probably at approximately the same rate as straight relationships), Peter’s calling them “disordered” simply because he’s ignorant.

homosexual parenting would not be worthy of celebration, LaBarbera said: “It is wrong to force children into a situation where they have two men modeling immoral behavior ‚Äî condemned by God and all major religions ‚Äî as the most important role models in their lives.”

The “immoral behavior” he’s talking about involves the following:

1. Driving carpool.

2. Cooking and cleaning.

3. Being loving parents to the children and to each other.

4. Providing a house and home.

5. All the other schlepping that all parents do, on a regular basis, etc.

Also, since we have no proof that Peter’s “God” exists, there’s no reason to respond to that one. Moreover, a growing number of adherents to the major religions agree that being gay is just part of the fabric of humanity, because not all religious people are anti-science whackjobs who are unwilling to accept reality as it is.

Gay parenting is a selfish social experiment whose long-term effect on children has not yet been determined ‚Äî biased homosexual-authored studies notwithstanding,” he said. “We know that dad-and-mom-led homes are the best for children. That is the timeless brand of fatherhood that Obama should be promoting,”

Actually, lots of studies have been done, and none of them show adverse effects on children of gay couples! Peter is merely saying the opposite because he knows there are a few people left out there who will believe him. The studies cited by the Religious Right, which they claim show adverse effects outside the Dad-Mom-married model, are, to a ‘t’, studies which compare children with married parents to children of single parents. The scientific consensus is that the best model for raising children is two committed parents of any gender combination, working together to give their kids the best chance in life.

This is inconvenient for Fundamentalists, but then again, most of reality is inconvenient for Fundamentalists, since they have a track record of exactly zero in having their ideas and theories tested and proven to be coherent and scientifically sound.

So…they just lie.

And more and more people every year are ignoring them. Indeed, 52% of Americans believe that gay relationships are morally acceptable. We’ve reached the tipping point. The group which has really solidified support for gay people among the general population is actually straight men, which probably is quite alarming to Peter. Straight men under 40 have grown up understanding that gay men are no threat to them or to their masculinity, and many have grown up with openly gay siblings and friends and fraternity brothers, etc. The support for gay equality among those under 40, in general, is very high, and those numbers aren’t going to go down. There’s little evidence that people become bigger bigots as they age, and there’s nothing the Religious Right can say to convince people who already live in reality that, despite everything they know to be true, gay people are some sort of menacing threat to society. Fundamentalist bigots reassure themselves by explaining away growing societal support for gay people as the result of some sort of nefarious media campaign, but millions know that it’s much simpler: our straight friends and allies support us simply because they know us.

Anyway, I hope those of you who are great fathers (including Peter, if he is, in fact, a good dad, and we have no reason to believe otherwise) and who have great fathers had a wonderful day yesterday.

oh my God! Me Five! what a statistical freak that we all responded to this column!

On a serious note, I kind of appreciate poor Pete. While not QUITE as extreme as Phelps, he HELPS us more than he hurts us. I know several hetero people who go to his site and view it for dark humor…no other reason. He is so extreme, he just makes his cause look stupid. I wonder if he knows this on some level? I mean, he has to feel dirty and cheap making his living this way…deep down at least, he has to know he is doing this as a professional “anti gay” because he does not have a thriving career in any other PRODUCTIVE field. Mean as he is, dangerous as I suppose he COULD be, I kind of pity him, truth be known. History is already recording him as a laughing stock.

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